Monday, February 11, 2013

Orion's Belt is a busy neighborhood

Orion's Belt and sword (including M42)

This image of Orion's Belt is made up of 129 subs, 25 darks, and 25 bias frames stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS). Each frame was taken at 130mm, f/4.5, 2 sec, ISO 1600 with a Canon Rebel XT on fixed tripod.

Orion's Belt and Sword labeled in Photoshop

As you can see, the three stars that make up the sword are actually a whole mess of stars and nebulous gas clouds that only appear to be 3-4 individual stars to the naked eye in moderate viewing conditions.

Update 3/18/2013: I uploaded this image to Astrometry.net and it was able to tag a LOT more objects in my field of view! Wow, what a cool service!

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